Comet C/2012 S1 Ison: an image (1 Sept. 2013)

Above is the first image of comet C/2012 S1 Ison taken with the Virtual Telescope after its conjunction with the Sun. It was an hard observation, with the comet just 12 deg. above the eastern horizon

The PlaneWave 17″ robotic unit was slewed to the comet and several images were captured. The one above is the average of 4, 120 seconds, unfiltered exposures, with a scale of 1.2″/pixel. The nucleus magnitude was estimated at mag 15.5 (preliminary value).

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